23 December 2016

Heirs of only four of 27 Gaddani blast victims get compensation:

KARACHI: Plot Number 54 in Gaddani’s
ship-breaking yard is largely empty apart from three workmen trying to fix a
recently installed safety tower right opposite the ship.

An explosion in an oil tank during gas
welding inside the ship caused the loss of 27 lives on Nov 1.

Work at the ship-breaking yard came to a halt
immediately afterwards.

News about work starting afresh at the
ship-breaking yard has filtered in just recently, but labourers say the work
has only begun at “ground level”.

Work is under way only to further dismantle
the already dismantled spare parts of one ship, beached next to the compound
before the Nov 1 explosion.

“Apart from that, 17 ships are still waiting
for the dismantling process to begin. These ships are still in the sea, because
the customs authorities have not yet received confirmation from the government
to allow dismantling work on it. As soon as they receive confirmation, the
ships will be beached and work will begin anew,” says Basheer Mehmoodani,
president of the ship-breaking worker union in Gaddani.

So far, workers at the ship-breaking yard
have received head gears, overalls and shoes from the association for their
safety at the site.

However, extended work hours with low wages
is another issue that needs to be considered, says Mohammad Moin from
Muzaffargarh who works near the safety tower.

Among the oldest labourers at the
ship-breaking yard, some are still awaiting compensation, Moin says, adding
that the families of four labourers out of the 27 victims have got Rs1.3
million each from the association.

“It was given to them by Balochistan
Development Minister Hamid Khan Achakzai,” says Moin.

From what he knows and heard the labourers at
the compound speak about, he says, documentation of the remaining 23 workers is
being completed.

The families of some Bengali and Burmese
workers have been running from one department to another in order to claim
their bodies.

Out of the 27 dead, the bodies of four
victims are yet to be found.

Two of them belong to Karachi and two are
from Gaddani. One of these bodies is of Mohammad Shafiq, son of Saira Bano,
from Karachi.

Being a Bengali, Saira Bano’s Computerised
National Identity Card (CNIC) is blocked on the basis of her status “not
ascertained by the institution,” and her son does not have an identity card,
which makes it difficult to look for him at hospitals and mortuaries where the
CNIC is a requirement.

“What they are doing right now,” says
Mehmoodani, “is trying to use Shafiq’s step father’s CNIC who is of Pakistani
origin. It’d help us in registering an FIR of him being missing since the
incident which would help in getting compensation for the family.”

Workers say that the Bengalis and Burmese
labourers get the riskier part of the job, including gas welding and helping
other labourers, while mostly Pakhtuns are tasked with emptying oil tanks.

“Since these Bengalis and Burmese are not
recognised by the state, chances of them getting exploited are higher than any
other labourer working at the ship-breaking yard,” says Mohammad Akhter Yaseen,
a labourer at the compound.

Apart from the Bengalis and the Burmese,
Pakhtuns are among 65 per cent of the labourers at the ship-breaking yard.

“They are the ones who get the major chunk of
the work which includes dismantling and cleaning of oil tanks,” says Yaseen.

He says that most of these people stay within
the compounds as they have nowhere else to go once the work is done for the
day. Baloch workers remain a minority at the ship-breaking yard, he explains.

Mehmoodani adds that with the help of
Workers’ Welfare Board of the Government of Balochistan, a sum of Rs15 million
has been kept aside for the labourers who died in the explosion.

“But those who got injured recently backed
off and said they don’t need compensation,” he claims.